Biden moves to ban more offshore drilling in final weeks in White House
(Bloomberg) – President Joe Biden is preparing to issue a decree permanently banning new offshore oil and gas development in some U.S. coastal waters, locking in difficult-to-revoke protections for sensitive marine areas during his final weeks in the White House.
Biden is set within days to issue the executive order barring the sale of new drilling rights in portions of the country’s outer continental shelf, according to people familiar with the effort who asked not to be named because the decision isn’t public.
The move is certain to complicate President-elect Donald Trump’s ambitions to drive more domestic energy production. Unlike other executive actions that can be easily undone, Biden’s planned declaration is rooted in a 72-year-old law that gives the White House wide discretion to permanently protect U.S. waters from oil and gas leasing without explicitly empowering presidents to revoke the designations.
The move responds to pressure from congressional Democrats and environmental groups who have lobbied Biden to “maximize permanent protections” against offshore drilling, arguing the action is essential to safeguard vulnerable coastal communities, protect marine ecosystems from oil spills and fight climate change.
White House and Interior Department officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The fresh offshore protections are in line with similar recent Biden actions to protect areas from industrial mining and energy development, including a formal proposal issued Monday to thwart the sale of new oil, gas and geothermal leases in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains.
Trump challenge
Trump is expected to order a reversal of the protections, but it’s not clear he will be successful. During his first term in office, Trump sought to revoke former President Barack Obama’s order to protect more than 125 million acres (50.6 million hectares) of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, which was rejected by a federal district court in 2019.
Trump, himself, has actually used the same statute to block oil and gas leasing in waters near Florida and North Carolina in a bid to appeal to voters in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Oil industry advocates have warned against restrictions, arguing the world will need fossil fuels for decades to come — and the U.S. produces them more cleanly than other countries. Nearly a century after it was first drilled, the Gulf of Mexico remains a key source of U.S. oil and gas, providing about 14% of domestic output today — enough that if it were a country, it would rank among the world’s top 12 oil producers.
